July 2025
The Queen Street entrance to Trinity Bellwoods Park in Toronto, Ontario, has a unique feature, that also serves as a nod to the property’s past: the stone and wrought iron gates that marked the main entrance to Trinity College.
Trinity Bellwoods Park was created around 1900, and was referred to at the time as Bellwoods Park, a name that was likely in reference to former alderman William Bell, who served St. Stephen’s Ward in Toronto from 1881 to 1883 and again from 1888 to 1896.
Much of what makes up the current 38-acre park was originally purchased from Janet Cameron (sister of Lieutenant-Colonel Duncan Cameron C.B., whom first lived here) of Gore Vale in 1851 by Scottish-Canadian Anglican Bishop John Strachan.
It was Strachan’s goal to establish a private college with strong Anglican ties, partly in opposition to the recently secularized University of Toronto. Featuring a main building constructed in the Gothic Revival style by architect Kivas Tully, one of the finest buildings in Toronto, students began attending Trinity College in 1852.
Trinity College remained an independent institution until 1904, when it entered into a federation with the University of Toronto in 1904. After completion of new buildings on the University of Toronto’s St. George Campus were completed in 1925, Trinity left the Bellwoods location.
All the Trinity buildings were then sold to the City of Toronto, with most of them being demolished in the early 1950s. Today, the only structures associated to the college are the former St. Hilda’s College building that served as the womens’ residence, and the stone and iron gates along Queen Street. The pillars underwent a complete restoration in 2007, that included masonry work and the replacement of some deteriorated cast stone elements.
The iron gates are actually replicas of the original gates, which were re-located to Trinity College School, a co-educational boarding/day school in Port Hope, in 1965.
The gates were installed at the Trinity campus as a part of the slightly less ostentatious Centennial Gates, found at the Deblaquire Street North entrance, in commemoration of the school’s centennial anniversary of its founding. Three years after the school’s founding, Trinity re-located to Port Hope, as an increase in enrollment necessitated larger facilities than found in the Toronto area.
Although having a similar name, Trinity College School, it was actually a different educational institution, founded in Weston, a former village that’s now a part of Toronto, by the Reverend William Arthur Johnson, who opened the school in May 1865, in the rectory above the Old Mill.
The Queen Street gates have become the most iconic structure representing Trinity Bellwoods Park and have become a much photographed landmark.
Sources: Trinity College, Toronto – Wikipedia, Trinity Bellwoods Park – Wikipedia, Nature and Park History – Friends of Trinity Bellwoods Park, Visitor’s Guide – Trinity College.
